"Do-Gooders"

       Question:  Is a Christian’s behavior any different from anyone else’s behavior?  What, if anything, makes behavior either Christian or not?  Is there any such thing as “Christian conduct?”  Or, is there just behavior, either good or bad, moral or immoral, acted out of high values or low values, no matter who the person is who’s acting out?

       To further clarify our questions, let’s make a more detailed distinction.  If there is such a thing as Christian behavior (and for the sake of argument, at this point, let’s say there is), it should be easy to contrast that to immoral and valueless, non-Christian behavior.  I think even non-Christians can recognize the negative and detrimental side of excessively bad behavior.  If there is a harder distinction to make, it would probably be the comparison of a Christian’s behavior with that of a morally, well-behaved non-Christian.  Is there a difference between the two?  And if there’s not, then what’s so special about being a Christian?

       An interesting poll has been taken by the Gallup people.  They have done this particular poll over several decades.  It’s a poll comparing people’s opinions on a wide variety of moral and ethical issues.  When comparing the responses between people who called themselves “regular church attenders,” with those who say they seldom, if ever attended church, guess what?  The difference of opinions of the two groups of people is basically nil.  I don’t know about you, but I find that startling and thought-provoking.  I would have expected a larger gap between the two groups.

       You may remember that I started out on the first Sunday of this month saying that I wanted us to think about the difference the Resurrection makes.  Why is the Resurrection so important to our daily beliefs and life?  I said that I thought we needed to get in touch with someone who was there, who saw the Resurrection of our Lord first hand.  We needed to listen to someone who was impacted by the reality of the Resurrection, and then tried to put down into words what it meant to him and his life.  That person, is Peter.  So, let’s turn to Peter and see what he has to say about living the Resurrection life, vs. just being a good person.

       One of the first assumptions that Peter makes is that there is supposed to be a difference between a person's former actions and their new behavior once they have embarked on their Christian pilgrimage, once they have believed in the Resurrection of Jesus.

       Two brothers, convicted of stealing sheep, were branded on the forehead with the letters ST for "sheep thief."  One brother, unable to bear the stigma, moved to a foreign country.  But people asked him about the strange letters.  He wandered restlessly.  Finally, full of bitterness, he died and was buried, to be forgotten.

       The other brother became a Christian.  He determined that he could not run away from the fact that he had stolen sheep.  So he decided to stay where he was and win back the respect of his neighbors.  As the years passed, he built a reputation for integrity.  One day, a stranger saw the old man with the letters branded on his forehead.  He asked a person in town what those letters meant.  "It happened a long time ago," said the townsperson.  "I've forgotten the particulars.  But I think the letters are an abbreviation for 'saint.'"

       A person can't help but go through a process of change once their lives have been touched by the resurrected Savior.  At least that is the expectation of Peter.  A Christian's character and behavior should be different from that of their pre-Christian days.

       Now, if it is true that there is such a difference, can we not also take that a step further and say that there should also be a difference between how Christians and non-Christians behave and think?  It's not a matter of having good morals.  There has to be some qualitative difference between the Christian and non-Christian.

       Take, for example, a baseball player.  Someone may be a fairly good baseball player.  They may make a few good plays.  They may hit the ball every now and then.  But what we mean by a good baseball player is the one whose eye for the pitch is exact.  They say good hitters can even see the seams of the pitched baseball and can tell how it's spinning.  These kinds of players get hit after hit.

       When I was up at Seattle I went to a Mariners game with a couple of friends.  The left fielder was getting booed all the time.  He wouldn't run up on the ball to make a catch but let it bounce in front of him.  Evidently, last season, at the end of an inning, in the middle of a game, he walked out of the stadium without telling anyone, got in his car, and drove away.  That's the difference between an OK player and a really good player.  There's a certain tone or quality about the person which shows through even when they aren't playing.  Every thing about them is about being the best that they can be.  Three days after the game I went to, the Mariners put that left fielder on waivers.

       In the same way, some people can be good people.  But isn't there another level of personhood that comes with being a Christian?  Is there a certain quality of character that's different in a Christian?  We would like to think that it is that quality, rather than the particular actions that makes the difference between a non-Christian and a Christian's behavior and character.

       Peter calls that quality of character being holy.  I talked some about this a couple of weeks ago.  Usually if someone is described as holy, it's with a negative connotation:  being a "holy Joe," or being, "holier than thou."  I can't remember hearing anyone described as being holy, and it being meant to be a positive thing.  It's probably one of the devil's tricks that terms like saintly, pious, angelic, Godly and holy have become negatively charged in our day.  At one time it was not so.  Especially with bozo's like Harold Camping saying he absolutely knows when the end of the world is going to happen.  Doesn't that guy read the Bible, where Jesus said even he doesn't know about God's plans for the end?  People like Camping give all of us believers a bad name when we are trying to be holy and faithful people.

       The reality, though, is that we can't escape those characteristics of holiness.  Holiness, in the Bible, is often contrasted with impurity and immorality.  There is a moral content of holiness that can't be avoided or watered down by a pagan and indifferent society.

       But there is a meaning of holiness that is not often emphasized.  I shared it in my sermon two weeks ago.  A good deal of the meaning of the character of being holy describes something, or someone, who has been dedicated, who has been set apart, who is single-minded in his or her purpose.

       People certainly can be holy in this respect.  In Leviticus, God tells the people, "Live holy lives before me because I, God, am holy.  I have distinguished you from the nations to be my very own" (20:26).  Notice, the reason the people are holy is not because of their behavior or stellar quality.  It's because God has set them apart for God's own special purposes.

       So, holiness of this kind is really a marker of identity.  Christians should not have any kind of identity crisis as to who they are, or whose they are.  One day, Charlie Brown was talking to his friend, Linus, about his low sense of self esteem; how he feels inadequate all the time.  Charlie Brown moans, "You see, Linus, it goes all the way back to the beginning.  The moment I was born and set foot onto the stage of life they took one look at me and said, 'Not right for the part.'"

       We are a holy people.  We don't call ourselves holy.  God does.  Because it is a distinction that God is making, then we know we can never say we are "not right for the part."  To be called holy by God means that God has set us apart for a special relationship with God and with each other.  God is the one who has cast us into this part on the stage of life.

       Some might tell you that all God wants is obedience to a set of rules.  That being good, that being right for the part, means following a bunch of do's and dont's.  Whereas, what it appears God really wants is that we be a people of a particular character, who are willing to display a certain kind of behavior because God has called us holy.  It is out of our relationship of holiness, given us by God, that makes our behavior distinctly different from a morally, good person.

       Let's get back to our original questions.  I hope you are beginning to see that a Christian's behavior is different from a highly moral non-Christian's mainly because our motivational source is different.  The Christian's behavior and character is good, or just, or whatever, simply and only because it is within the will and purposes of our relationship with God.  The Christian, and therefore the Christian's behavior, has been set apart by God.  Thus it takes on a different depth and quality.

       Philip Crosby in his book, The Art of Getting Your Own Sweet Way, wrote:  "Much of the wasted effort in human activity is a result of a lack of clear definition of the real or total reason for doing something.  If you cannot determine why you are doing something, you probably won't do it very well."

       If we are, as the Santa Claus tune says, "being good for goodness sake," then we have made "being good" our god.  Thus, C.S. Lewis made a whole lot of sense when he wrote, "...that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called 'virtue,' and it is this quality or character that really matters."  (Mere Christianity, pg. 77)

       Just being good for goodness sake is not enough.  We have to be good for the right reasons.  Maybe on the day of our salvation, we not only need to be forgiven for our sins, but also we might need forgiveness for our goodness.  Even that, prior to our relationship with Christ, was done for the wrong reasons and out of misguided motivations.

       One of my favorite short stories is titled "Revelation," by Flannery O'Connor.  In this story there is Mrs. Turpin.  She's a self-righteous kind of person who is always judging others.  Someone who's been good her whole life, but defining goodness in her own way.

       Towards the end of the story, Mrs. Turpin falls in her pig pen.  She is covered in muck.  The hogs are milling and rooting around her fallen body.  She can't get up.  She thinks she's going to die.  In the midst of her frantic hog pen experience she sees a vision of people parading into heaven.  Some are singing.  Some are shouting.  A whole long line of people she has disrespected and judged her whole life, all of them going into heaven.  As all these people got to a certain place, all their sins were being burned away by a powerful light.

       Then she sees a different kind of folks, at the end of the procession.  This is how Flannery O'Connor writes the scene:

And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right...They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior.  They alone were singing on key.  Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.

       Being a good person isn't what it's all about.  I like the way O'Connor has it, that even our goodness is burned away in the end.  Because all that matters is our holiness--that is our being set apart in an amazing relationship with God.  And then letting all of our actions and behaviors be motivated by that relationship, rather than a sense of our own pridefulness.

       As believers in Christ, you are a holy people.  A special people.  You have been set apart by him, dedicated by Christ for a special relationship, purpose and behavior.  You are to be different, because of that relationship that God has set us in, from the non-believing world, even the highly moralistic non-believers.  You are a holy people, made holy by God's own gracious choosing, through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Live according to that holiness.  Live like resurrection people.

"Chosen"

"Chosen"
1 Peter 2:9-10

Most of us have sad stories about not being chosen.  Remember those days in elementary school?  During recess a group of us would line up against the wall so that teams could be chosen for dodge ball.  The same two boys always ended up being the captains.  They were the ones who did the choosing.  I don’t know how it was that they were always the captains.  I don’t remember anyone choosing them to be captains.  I think they chose themselves.  The rest of us evidently allowed them to do that, because no one ever complained or put themselves forward as a captain.

I was always chosen near the end or at the end.  You know, with the rest of the kids that were hurriedly divided up as the extras that were either not cool enough, or good enough to even be chosen.  We were just separated like cattle.  Bodies to be cast to one side or the other.

Then something amazing happened.  I started growing.  Between 8th and 9th grade I grew 12 inches.  One whole foot!  That’s what I used to tell people, that I grew a foot in one year.  But then some wise guy replied, “That’s funny; when did you grow the other one?”  I went from 5’5” to 6’5.”  I didn’t have any problem getting chosen after that.

In fact, the basketball coach said he wanted to choose me to play basketball.  I had never played before.  So I know I wasn’t being chosen for my skill.  I was simply being chosen because I was really tall.  When I played, in those early years, I was like a Picasso painting: a kid with arms and legs in odd places and at odd angles, running down the court, trying to keep from tripping over my big feet, or the lines painted on the court.

Even though I had no idea what I was doing, it was an overpowering feeling of affirmation to be chosen.  Not only chosen to be on the team, but chosen to play as well.  Actually, the only reason I got to play was because the starting center broke his ankle two games into the season, and I was suddenly pushed off the bench and into a playing role.  The coach kind of had to choose me after losing his starter.  Or it was like the basketball gods had chosen me, and my destiny had been set.  I would be a player, not a gangly bench sitter, after that.  My life was never the same.

There certainly are times when we are chosen, and we know in our heart of hearts that there was nothing we did that affected that choosing.  Some call it destiny, or fate, or chance.  I prefer to think of it as something that God is up to behind the scenes.  For God’s own reasons, He chooses, and lives are forever changed.  God selects someone out of a group of others, like David chosen out of all the rest of his older brothers, and that choosing creates ripple effects usually not just in their life, but in a lot of lives surrounding the chosen one.

In the Old Testament, the Jews defined themselves as God’s chosen people.  Chosen for a special destiny.  Chosen for a special mission.  Chosen to be a witness to the nations.  In the musical, “Fiddler On The Roof,” the old town Rabbi says, “We know, O God, we are your chosen people; but isn’t it time you chose someone else.”

God eventually did choose some others, or at least expanded His circle of who was chosen.  Through Jesus Christ, from New Testament times on, God includes the church as part of those who are the chosen.  Let’s find out what that means, according to Peter.

You’ll notice Peter addresses his letter to Christians who are “...exiles, scattered to the four winds.”  They weren’t scattered because they decided to move to a new town.  They were scattered because people who followed Jesus, who were chosen to be the church, were being searched out and killed in gruesome ways by the Roman government.  Some were crucified, covered with tar, and lit on fire so Emperor Nero could stroll his gardens at night time by the light of flaming Christians.  Some were sawn in half.  Some were dealt with sarcasm.  Sarcasm is a word for torture involving slicing a person down the middle of their torso, and slowly pealing the flesh back.  That’s what sarcasm literally means.  It comes from two Greek words:  “sarx” meaning flesh, and “chamsa” which means to cut or gouge.  If you tend towards being sarcastic, you might keep the word’s meaning in mind.

And still some of the chosen, good church people, were pulled apart by teams of horses; others were thrown to the lions in the arena simply for the sport of the demented crowds.  These are the terrified, hiding, running, scattered believers that Peter is addressing his letter to.  These are the people he writes the words Glen read earlier.  Imagine you are a group of those terrified believers, you open up this letter from Peter and you read:

But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you--from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

The Christians reading Peter’s letter might be thinking along the lines of the Jewish Rabbi’s prayer, “Dear God, If this is what it means to be chosen, it’s maybe time you chose some other people.”  If life is getting really awful and scary and just down right crappy, you might be reassessing what it means to be chosen, to be and remain faithful.  You might be wondering what kind of “night-and-day” difference God has really affected in your life.  Have you been chosen to go from nothing to something, only to be torched in Nero’s gardens?  Have you been chosen to go from rejected to accepted, only to become lion fodder in the arena?  Have you been chosen to be priestly, only to become a human sacrifice, not on an altar, but on the torture table of some Roman sadist with a saw?

So, being chosen by God doesn’t spare you from the chaos and craziness in the world.  Fortunately we don’t live with those same kinds of circumstances that Peter’s letter readers had to live with.  We get to come here to worship, and not worry that the police are going to bust down the door and haul us all away to do unspeakably awful things to our bodies.  Even if we did, it wouldn’t change the fact that we’ve been given an identity by God as people He has chosen.  What’s important is that we’ve been given an identity and we must be a people who are constantly living into that identity, as God’s chosen people.

As we examine that identity, let’s ask some simple questions that Peter answers in this single sentence of his letter.  The first question is, Who’s chosen?  “You” are, Peter writes.  But not you, individually.  This isn’t about you, personally.  It’s about you, plural.  All of you.

Or, as I found when I was in seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, “Y’all.”  But, I found out, even that isn’t right.  “Y’all,” I came to find out is singular.  I met a guy in seminary from Georgia, who became one of my close friends while we were there.  He came up to me one day and said, “What y’all doin’?”  I was by myself so I looked around me to see who “all” he was talking to.  I thought a bunch of people must have snuck up behind me.  Or, maybe he thought I had developed multiple personalities.  But it was just me, so I discovered, “y’all” is singular.  If you wanted to address a group of people it was, “All, y’all.”  That’s what Peter was saying in his letter (if he lived in the south):  “You, all y’all, are the ones chosen by God.”

We all got chosen by God in one fell swoop.  We’re all in this together.  This isn’t about individuals.  It’s about us.  It’s about making a stronger, more profound impact on God’s team as “all y’all” rather than just a bunch of individual “y’alls.”

Which leads us to another question Peter tries to answer, “What have we been chosen by God for?”  It’s clear that for Peter being chosen doesn’t have anything to do with getting status or notoriety.   When I was a kid, and we were all up against the wall at recess, like I explained earlier, there was usually one of the captains who was cooler than the other.  Like Ken Montgomery.  Just being chosen by him was the best.  It elevated everyone’s status just because we were on his team, and he chose us.

But that’s not what’s going on when we get chosen by God.  It doesn’t mean we are cooler or better than anyone else.  It doesn’t mean that our status is suddenly elevated, that our stock as a human being just went through the roof.  To be chosen by God, as Peter describes it means being chosen for responsibility.  Being chosen doesn’t mean we get to sit back and do nothing; thinking that being chosen was all it was about.  And just because the world may be chaotic and scary, and we may be in survival mode, doesn’t mean we get to run and hide.  We have to, as the chosen ones, live out of our new identities as the chosen.

For Peter, that new identity is best described as the “high calling of priestly work.”  All y’all have been chosen to be priests.  Isn’t that a kick?  Now does that mean that you have to wear those black shirts with the uncomfortable tight white collars, and say words in Latin that no one understands?  Does that mean that you have to all of a sudden become celibate and give up your marriages?  Thankfully, a big NO to all of that.

But Peter describes what it means to be chosen for priestly work in the rest of the sentence.  First it means to be chosen to be a holy people.  The word “holy” literally means something or someone who has been set apart for a special purpose.  So to be chosen for priestly work means that each of you is to help everyone else to see how each of you is special.  As a congregation you are to do the work of understanding how God has set all of you apart, in a together kind of way, for a special purpose.  God has chosen this congregation, and set them in this community, for a special purpose.  Do you have an understanding of what that is?  Do you know what that purpose might be?  That’s why we worship and study and pray and fellowship together, not just for our own fun, but to discern how God has set all y’all aside for a special purpose in this place.

Next Peter says that the high calling of priestly work is to tell others about the night-and-day difference God has made in your life.  Individually, and as a congregation, the expectation is that you don’t get to ever stay the same.  We are, all of us, moving from something to something else.  You aren’t the same person you were 5 years ago.  Nor, hopefully, are you the same congregation you were 5 years ago.  You have made some changes yourself, or changes have been thrust upon you.

The great thing with God is that these changes are of an upward nature; they are positive rather than negative, in God’s way of doing things.  The movement of change as Peter describes it is from “nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.”  These kinds of changes are going on continually in our lives, which means that God is continually active in those changes in our lives.  So, it is our priestly work to tell each other, to tell others the nature of those movements in our lives.  They encourage all of us as you are willing to share what’s different in your life, and how God has helped shape those differences.

In my mind, this kind of story-telling has to be done with a lot of grace-full listening.  The changes and identity shaping circumstances may have been a result of stupid things we did, or bad choices, or hurtful actions by others.  Like I said, just because we are chosen doesn’t mean that we stop being human beings and start acting like angels.  Or that life magically gets easier.  Life together means giving each other a lot of grace, helping each other find the forgiveness, acceptance and embrace that we need to go on.  And then tell each other those stories of how that happened, for our mutual encouragement.  If God really makes a difference in our individual lives and in our life together, that’s where the story has to begin and be told.

Peter calls being chosen by God a “high calling.”  I’ve talked to so many people who feel like their lives aren’t counting for much of anything; that they aren’t participating in anything that they would describe as a high calling.  They feel they don’t have purpose.  They don’t feel like they are doing anything that has the conviction of God behind it.  They don’t feel like they are in the grip of doing anything that resembles some profound motivation.  I hear the same from congregations as well.

How much of what all y’all does flows out of this kind of motivation?  Isn’t that something that we all desire, either as individual believers or as a congregation?  We want to do something that gives us the sense of being God-connected.  We want to know that we are doing something worthwhile in a meaningful sense.  That what we are doing is somehow making a difference and having a worthy impact.

This kind of identity can only come through doing the priestly work Peter has described that God has chosen all y’all for.  Only in our identity as chosen by God will we find that sense of calling and satisfaction that we may have lost along the way.  It means being a part of a community that knows it is chosen to courageously share the subtle and profound movements in their life together, and help God and help each other make it come out right, make it a positive shift rather than negative.  That’s meaningful and priestly work.

It also means keeping a sense of holiness about what all y’all are doing.  That you, together, have been set aside by God, chosen by him, for a special purpose.  You can only find that out together.  You can only celebrate that together.  You can only keep at that kind of holiness together.  That’s who you are.  That’s who God chose you to be and to do.

Easter: "Written In Red"

Narration One
Every story needs a beginning.
The trouble is,
no one knows when that is.
Because this story begins with God:
“In the beginning, God...”
Before any action took place,
there was God.
First God,
then the world.
First God,
then God’s creative love
fashioned into the world.
First God,
then God’s love affair
with what God made.
First God,
then the world
now inseparably intertwined;
God can exist without the world,
but who is God
without the world?
So, when the world went bad
when the world went off
without God
God started a new story,
a story in which God would not make a new world
but woo the world back
to that relationship of love
that God
nor the world
can exist without.
God’s wooing
called for a Messiah--
and that’s where we start our story:
when God woos
when the Messiah arrives.

Narration Two
Everyone has to have a name.
A name describes
who you are
where you came from
from whom you came
your history
your heritage
your uniqueness.
Our names.
They carry so much.
Our names carry us.
You can make a “good name” for yourself.
Or you can disgrace your family name.
You can make fun of a person
by making fun of their name.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus,
a name that means:
“God is help.”
To speak of Jesus
is to, at the same time,
recognize
and affirm
the help of God.
To say the name of Jesus
is to recognize
and affirm
that God is in Jesus.
Sad,
that this name is used by many
so flip,
so casually,
so cruelly,
as a cuss word.
What if your name became a cuss word?
Jesus Christ.
Christ, of course,
is not Jesus’ last name.
It is a title.
It means:  “the anointed one.”
The chosen one.
Chosen by God.
It means, Messiah.
That’s what we call him:
Jesus Christ,
God’s help,
the Messiah of God.
We call him, Messiah.


Narration Three
Extra!  Extra!
Read all about it!
Back in the good old days,
the news boys would stand on the street corners
shouting the headlines
holding up the newspapers
displaying the banner
trying to get your attention
so you’d spend a dime
and buy a paper.
The news boys are gone.
The newspaper,
is now tossed silently
from the window of a passing car
in the wee hours of the morning
while you are still sleeping,
on to your lawn
or driveway;
wrapped in a plastic bag
so you can’t even see the banner headlines.
No more,
are the headlines shouted out to us
as if it is crucial
that everyone know.
It is amazing how calmly
the anchors on the evening news
can tell us what's happening in the world.
Is nothing worth shouting about anymore?
Extra! Extra!
Read all about it!
Jesus has Risen from the dead!
Jesus has conquered death!
There’s a banner
that needs to be shouted across our land!

Narration Four
There are a lot of people
who don’t like to be told what to do.
They would like to be their own boss
the captain of their own ship
the master of their own domain.
But how many really are?
Everyone takes orders
from somebody.
So, let’s not fool ourselves.
All of us come to the point
of succumbing to the wishes
of someone else.
If everyone got their own way,
no one would get their way.
Life would be hell.
There would be no peace.
So, if we are going to kneel to another’s will
whose will
will that be?
That is our only free choice:
whose will
will be done?
Even Jesus comes to that point
on his knees
in the Garden of Gethsemane
when he says to God:
“Not my will, but Thine be done.”
In that statement
is the only hope for us all.

Narration Five
Isn’t it amazing
that the Cross
has become a piece of jewelry?
The cross is a form of execution.
It is an execution
of immeasurable pain
and humiliation.
The one who is pinned to the cross
is first stripped naked.
Put on degrading display
for anyone to stand and stare.
All the paintings
of this awful event
choose modesty
over reality
draping Jesus with a loin cloth.
A person,
dies on the cross
by suffocation.
Chest muscles give out
trying to hold themselves up;
the lungs collapse;
they can’t breathe anymore,
gasping for air;
they die.
On a cross.
A form of horrible
and humiliating execution.
A cross.
That we wear around our necks,
transformed by one such execution
of Jesus
into a symbol
not of death,
but of love.
Because it wasn’t the nails that held Jesus to the Cross,
it was his love for us all.

Narration Six
Peter Marshall,
the once Chaplain of the Senate
said
that the stone was not rolled away from the tomb
to let the Savior out,
but to let the disciples in.
Someone had to see.
Someone had to find out
that Jesus’ body was not there.
Someone had to see,
that the burial cloths
were not pulled off
and rumpled on the floor,
but still lay
as if Jesus had just vaporized
through them.
Someone had to see
that this was no prank
nor trick.
Someone had to see
that a dead man
a dead man
had been brought
not back to life,
not had death reversed
only to die again.
Someone had to see
that Jesus had been brought forward
to a new life
a different form of life
a life that only has to do with God
and only what God can do.
Someone had to go in and see,
that even death
can be transformed.
Someone had to go in and see,
Resurrection!

Narration Seven
How do you say,
“I love you?”
So many articles
and so many books
written about love
and what it is:
The Five Love Languages
Lessons in Love
Love Yourself and Let the Other Person Have It Your Way
Eat, Pray, Love
Love and Respect
Getting the Love You Want
The Four Loves
How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You
to name a few
of the current bestsellers
on the subject.
But Jesus said,
“This is the best way to love.
Put your life on the line for your friends.”  (John 15:13)
And that’s what Jesus did.
Jesus put his life on the line
sacrificed it
so that we could live.
Forever.
Love,
written in red.

Narration Eight
Christ the Lord is risen today
All creation join to say,
Raise your joys and triumphs high,
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply.

Lives again our glorious King,
Where, O death, is now thy sting?
Once he died our souls to save,
Where thy victory, O grave?

Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!

"What If You Could Start Over?"

"What If You Could Start Over?"
1 Peter 1:3-5

       I read an article this week that was a sort-of rebuttal to the atheists that Easter doesn't matter.  That it couldn't have happened.  That it's not verifiable.  The article was trying to make the point that even the invisible forces in the world, like love, or honor, are no less so just because you can't see them.  So it is with God.  And the Resurrection.

       It got me thinking about how do you "see" the Resurrection?  This is the first Sunday after Easter.  We had a great string of Holy Week services, building to the crescendo of the Easter Sunday cantata.  But what does the Resurrection mean for everyday living?  What does it mean to live the Resurrection life?

       I think we need to find out from an eye-witness.  Someone who was there.  Someone who was one of the first to be there.  Someone who stuck his head in the empty tomb.  Someone who had a couple of intimate conversations with the Risen Jesus.  Someone like Peter.  For Peter, the Resurrection was everything.  It formed the basis of everything he came to believe.  It was what empowered him to become the leader of the early Christian church.

       So, we're going to turn to Peter's first letter this month, and look at what Peter wrote about the Resurrection, and why the Resurrection is so important for the Christian life.

       In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the main characters is Nick Carraway.  Nick thinks about what he calls, "the last and greatest of all human desires.  The last and greatest of all human desires is also one of the foremost and primary human dreams.  Those who study the mythology of different peoples have found this desire weaving its way throughout each culture's history.

       In the Bible, this greatest of all human desires is traced from the time when Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden, all the way to a midnight conversation between Nicodemus the Pharisee and Jesus.

       What is this "last and greatest of all human desires," this first and foremost of all human aspirations?  It is the dream of starting over.  It's what I call the resurrection desire.

       In "Decision Magazine," published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, there is story after story of people who have ached for this dream.  There is a medical intern who saw ads for a crusade in Columbia, South Carolina.  The intern attended and responded to the invitation to bring Jesus Christ into her life.  She said, "I'm tired of the life I've been living.  I need a fresh start.  I need to get things right with God."

       And there was the story of an attorney who said he and his wife were both alcoholics.  Their home-life was breaking apart.  He said they both needed a drastic change--a totally new lease on life.  Like the gospel story of the woman who had a hemorrhage of blood for 12 years, and spent every penny she had on every possible remedy, the attorney and his wife said, "We've tried everything else; Jesus is our last chance."  With that desire in their hearts they both attended and came forward at a crusade.

       What if you could start over?  How has this greatest of all human desires, this longing to begin again, this hunger for resurrection, been like a seed planted in your heart?  How would your life be different if you could let that seed grow and you began again?

       You know how you hear about people who just disappear?  Their faces may be on milk cartons or on fliers stapled to telephone poles, or stuck on laundromat bulletin boards.  My guess is, a number of those lost people don't want to be found.  When you run away, you run away from something or someone; but you are also running toward something else.  That's why I think some runaways, particularly adults, are running toward the dream of starting over.  Starting over somewhere, with a new name.  To become the kind of person they were never allowed to be in their past.

       Such is the story of Jean Valjean in the famous novel, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  Jean Valjean runs from his convict past.  He was arrested for stealing bread to feed his starving family.  After an escape from prison, he finds refuge in the house of a priest.  The next morning, Valjean has disappeared and some silverware is missing from the priests home.

       The next day, the police bang on the priest's door.  They have captured Valjean with the missing silver.  The priest looks at Valjean and says to him, "But you forgot the silver candlesticks I gave you as well.  Here, take them."  Valjean is stunned.  He's been shown unbelievable grace.  He takes the silver pieces and sells them.  He uses the money to start a small business that turns into a large business that saves a village.  He becomes mayor of the village.

       But then there is Inspector Jabert.  Jabert is hunting Valjean.  He doesn't want Jean Valjean to have another chance, to live a new life.  Both men in this great novel symbolize the two ways people approach life:  the Jabert way, which says you are chained to your past.  That nobody can change who they are.  And the Jean Valjean way, that pursues the great human aspiration of being freed from your past, of starting totally over.  It is about living life in a brand new way, and toward an ever new future.

       Which of the two character's approach to life most describes how you view life?  Do you feel people, especially yourself, are fated to always be a prisoner of your past?  Locked in a tomb of your past with a huge stone rolled into place so you can't get out?  Is there no hope for you to become someone radically different than who you have been?  Is your only choice to be resigned to the fact of who you are, to sadly accept that you can never be changed?  That you will always live this tomb-encased life?  Have you succumbed to the thought that, "It's too late for me.  It's over."

       Here is what I believe.  I believe that God is the one who sows the seeds of starting over in every human heart.  You know how there are certain kinds of seeds that lay dormant in the soil until just the right conditions bring them to germination?  Sometimes there has to be a prairie fire, and there are particular seeds that are activated by the intense heat of the fire.  They need the disaster of that fire to germinate and begin life.

       So it is with this seeded yearning that God plants in each person.  When the prairie fire of human failure races across a person's life, that seed is activated.  The desire, the deep implanted need to start over begins to grow.  When the shoot, and the stem, and the first leaves appear, we begin the sometimes frantic search for that which will fertilize and water that precious new growth.

       I believe God hopes that in our search, we will turn to him to find the only authentic nurture that will bring that budding plant--that desire to start over--to come to fruit. Since it is God's seed, it is only by God that it grows.  All the other ways we try to make that desire unfold will only result in the frustration of watching the it whither and die.  That's when we get lost in resignation.  We become Jabert, thinking people can only be chained to their past, and never have a new future.

       Right at the start of his letter, the apostle Peter wants Christians everywhere to realize and hear again what God has done to give us this chance at new birth and new life.  As Peter personally understands, it is by God's act of raising Jesus Christ from the dead that we gain the new life we dream about.  That's why the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so important.  It is the way that God fulfills the deep yearning in each of us to start fresh.

       To give you another metaphor, the Resurrection of Christ is a door that God places before us.  If we accept what God has done for us in Christ, we open the door, step through, and shut the door behind us.  What we find when we walk through that resurrection door is that the door shut behind us has no door knob on our side.  We don't have a way of opening it again and going back.  We can only go forward into a brand new future with God, through Christ.

       Or think of it in terms of the birth process.  That's what Peter calls it in his letter.  We are given a rebirth through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Imagine yourself in the womb.  This is what Jesus was trying to get the Pharisee Nicodemus to picture, but Nicodemus' imagination was too limited.  Open up your imagination and picture yourself in the womb.  It's warm in there.  You tell yourself you are comfortable in a very cramped sort of way.

       You hear muffled sounds of another existence.  But you convince yourself it's not for you.  You tell yourself that this is the only place where you fit.  You feel fated to stay wrapped up in a little, tight ball of cramped existence.

       Then you hear a Voice.  The Voice is calling you out of that confined life.  "Come out, little one.  Come out and see this new world I have for you.  Come out and live a new life.  Grow and become.  Come out, child, into your new life."

       But you resist.  The Voice comes again.  That Voice describes in detail the kind of life you can have if you would only be born anew.  The Voice describes the sights and smells and tastes and wonders of a brand new existence.

       You are afraid.  It might hurt.  You're going to have to make a change.  Live differently.  The Voice speaks softly, "I have taken the pain of your new birth in my own body.  Don't be afraid.  Be born anew."  You touch the uterine walls of your confined life, not sure you can, or want to leave that space.  But hearing of the new life outside the womb, you long to see if the promises are true.  There's only one way to find out:  leave the womb of that previous life and be born anew.  Be born into the promises the Voice told you about.  Take the chance.

       You close your eyes.  You let God's resurrecting contractions begin.  When you open your eyes again you find yourself in a world beyond your imagining.  You are totally different.  You have been refit by God for the new world and new life you have just been born into.  Your heart is beating with hope.  Your lungs are filled with life.  Your existence has been radically and decisively changed.  The memory of your previous reality fades as quickly as a dream when you are waking.  It is unbelievable.  And it is all real.

       Isn't that what you desire?  Deep down you have wished to God that things could be different.  The Voice of God speaks and says, "Things can be different; they are different.  I have done all that for you in the raising of Jesus Christ from death.  Come out.  Come out of the womb.  See all the blessings that are yours in the new life I have made available to you.  Now is the time for your new birth.  Come out of your old life.  Be born anew.  See the resurrection life!"